Lyft CMO Brian Irving

BRIAN IRVING: And she said, “The best advice I can give you is that you realize you don't speak the same language. The words that you use, the phrases, the colloquialisms are not all the same.” And for me, what that really cemented and embedded was something that I already had — but like it just wasn't totally front of mind — was a relentless pursuit of curiosity, and not assuming to know something.

GREG STUART: Welcome to Building Better CMOs, a podcast about how marketers can get stronger and smarter. I am Greg Stuart, the CEO of the nonprofit MMA Global. And that voice you heard at the top is Brian Irving, the CMO of Lyft. He's been with the company for just about a year and previously served in marketing roles at Apple, Google, Airbnb, Eventbrite, Meta, and the agency Rapp.

Today on the podcast, Brian and I are going to talk about what marketers miss when they celebrate their craft, connecting marketing results to business metrics, and why we don't have all the driverless cars yet. Now, this podcast is about the challenges marketers face and unlocking the true power that marketing can have. Brian is going to tell us how he does that, right after this.

GREG: Brian Irving, welcome to Building Better CMOs.

BRIAN: Thank you, Mr. Stuart. Thank you for having me here.

GREG: Oh, we're so formal. We're so formal. It's kind of like when you pick up the ride, you try to be really proper. They must train that there at Lyft. So for the listener, if you've not looked at something, I don't know how you could get on here and not know, but Brian Irving is the CMO of Lyft.

BRIAN: I sure am. Thank you for having me, Greg.

GREG: How long have you been there now, Brian? A little over a year plus.

BRIAN: Not even quite a year. I started at the end of March of 2024.

GREG: I think you've actually even come out with your ad campaign position. I'm not saying that right, but there's a strategy that you've identified going there. I'm sorry, I had it right here with me in front of me. What is it?

BRIAN: Yeah, "Where are you going?"

GREG: "Where are you going?"

BRIAN: Yeah. I mean, it is the fundamental question within the product, and it comes from a place of true Lyft tone of voice, which is that curiosity of where you're going. What I love about it is the double meaning of it, both how can we get to this moment where you're going, but also the very human aspect of where are you going and the role that Lyft can play in that.

GREG: Right. I got the... it's not really a double entendre. I don't think that's what that is, but it's kind of the double meaning. There's a nice sort of functional with an aspirational sense to that, too.

BRIAN: That's a beautiful way of saying it.

GREG: I don't know that the listeners here would know, but you also did a very similar thing for Airbnb and gave meaning to Airbnb, if I read your bio correctly.

BRIAN: I was part of Airbnb and our transition from really focusing on nights and people traveling and shared homes to really offering experiences and expanding. That sense of living somewhere, which is just a truly magical part of traveling, which I love.

GREG: Yeah. I remember when it came out and thinking, "Wow, that's a very powerful way to say that." To me, it kind of heartened me to it, sort of like advertising/marketing is what it does in the world. But we don't see enough of that sometimes, it feels.

BRIAN: I'll tell you the thing that... I mean, in addition to getting to work with some truly brilliant marketing minds like Jonathan Mildenhall at the time and having a CEO who truly brings in brand in Brian Chesky, the thing I was incredibly proud of is that that brand positioning led not just to the marketing campaign that we launched and executed, but also how the product experience came to life and I think the collaboration and making that seamless connection for the consumer. So I was also really proud of that.

GREG: Yeah, yeah. Funny enough, by the way, I wasn't even going to mention this when I was going into it, but I actually have an Airbnb unit. I have a house in Brooklyn. It's a two-family house. Very typical of the area. And so we Airbnb, we don't permanently rent that out, and it's honestly been a great experience, but it's been interesting to watch as a host customer, I guess I am at some level, how you've sort of transformed the company, how you think about that, and what you push me to do in order to provide a better experience. It's very interesting. I've really noticed that. I thought it's a very powerful idea.

BRIAN: Yeah. I mean, I think Brian, Nate, and Joe from the very beginning had not just a product and an app idea, but truly a brand and a division that went far beyond that.

GREG: I want to come back to Lyft here. I'm sorry, I'm on so many tangents. The whole industry is interesting. Your background…

BRIAN: We go all over.

GREG: You've actually been at many, not crossroads, but just important parts. I mean, you were at Meta Reality Labs, right? Am I right?

BRIAN: Yeah.

GREG: And so there's a number of places and things that you've done. Eventbrite, which I happen to know the CEO or founder there. Is that your career trajectory? It's like, "Hey, let me figure out who's doing something really cool and interesting, and I'm going to go join them." Is that it?

BRIAN: I wish I was that smart. I grew up in Flint, Michigan, so I kind of think that everything that I get to do is just almost unbelievable, to be honest with you. And a true believer in the combination of saying yes and also serendipity. And I mean, I have been incredibly fortunate to work at not just great brands, great companies, but at these moments when they are on the verge of something. And it's been truly awesome to be part of.

GREG: Yeah. You know what, Brian, I couldn't agree with you more. If I was to give advice... And I don't know if my children would listen to it, and they're not going to hear this, they won't know anyway. But if I was to give advice to say, try to find and be at those moments of inflection in the world at large. Yeah. I was early at YNR building an interactive group when this WWW thing happened.

BRIAN: Oh, yeah.

GREG: And I went on to run the IB, which transformed the online advertising industry. I mean, we were $8 billion when I took over that association. And I came here for MMA when we were mobile. Mobile in 2007, I came here in 2010, but mobile was another inflection point. And then AI is at an inflection point now today.

BRIAN: That's right.

GREG: So being there is such a big deal. And I didn't even mention you had Google in there. I mean, really crazy, crazy background.

BRIAN: Yeah, Apple. Apple was right as iPhone was kicking off.

GREG: Wait, wait, Apple. So wait, Apple. Oh, right. So you got there... What month was the iPhone introduced?

BRIAN: It was introduced in January of 2007.

GREG: Yeah, 2007.

BRIAN: In the US. I actually started in London, in our London office. I was there. I was living in London, I was working with another agency.

GREG: Yeah, Rapp.

BRIAN: Yeah.

GREG: I know Rapp.

BRIAN: Yeah. Yep. I was working with Rapp at the time. And through doing some work with small projects with them locally, with Apple, locally there, the opportunity to actually go there came up. And it was at the point when we were about to launch the iPhone in Europe.

GREG: Oh wow. Did it feel like a big deal at the time?

BRIAN: It felt massive. It felt like a cultural...

GREG: You knew from the beginning.

BRIAN: ... it felt like something was changing in society.

GREG: Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. I remember actually driving. I was out in the Valley for some reason. I don't know who I was talking to, Google, Meta, or something. And I remember just actively driving around the Valley trying to figure out where I could buy an iPhone. I knew it was a big deal. I could tell. And then it turned out to be an even bigger deal than we thought. Yeah. Crazy.

BRIAN: Much, much bigger.

GREG: Okay, let's come back to Lyft here. Sorry, a little trip down memory lane of future changes in society at large.

BRIAN: The weird thing is that I'm only 25 years old, so I don't know how all of that has actually happened.

GREG: It's so incredible. Yeah. People ask me my age and I say, "Well, you only turn 35 once."

BRIAN: That's right.

GREG: There's no answer to the question whatsoever.

GREG: So Brian, so let's go back to the rideshare microtransport business, if I got that right. Talk to me: what is happening in rideshare today? I mean, what's the state of it?

BRIAN: It continues to grow, which is phenomenal. I mean, if you think of there are over 150 billion trips in the US alone a year that people take of some kind. Rideshare is still a fraction of that, like 3 to 4 percent of those. And yet we have grown to be such a significant part of society. We are a significant part of how people earn money, which is a huge part of why I truly love...

GREG: Transformational for people, how they run their economics and personal lives. Yeah.

BRIAN: It's amazing. Whether this is, you have been able to turn this into a full-time earner for you and your family, whether it is a side hustle because you have spare time. Some people doing it just for the human connection of getting to spend time with people. We spend loads of time on the epidemic of loneliness and being isolated at home under the guise of convenience.

But the fact that the earning part of this for real people is what beats my heart every morning to get up and do this. And then the flip side of this coin is that what you started with, where are you going now for the rider. It's what we get, and we have these opportunities from kind of the mundane of like, 'I need to get to work' or 'I need to go to a doctor appointment,' to the sublime of 'I'm having my first date' or 'I'm getting to my first overseas trip and I'm going to the airport.' We get to be part of people's journeys. Both in point A to point B but also in their journeys in life. So there's a tremendous amount for me, personally, behind why I love doing this, but also the fact that it continues to be an ever-evolving and growing industry. And of course now we also have then AV, right? And there's this big, big question mark. There are loads of hypotheses around it. I mean, as a marketer, how fascinating and awesome is that as well?

GREG: Yeah, it really is crazy what's happened in the whole industry and how it's become so important. I live in New York City, so for me, Lyft is the most important thing I have here because getting a car around is just kind of a nuisance.

GREG: And then also, I think I mentioned earlier, I'm a big Citi Bike rider. I mean, I live in Brooklyn. I probably take Citi Bike most of the places only for the simple convenience. I'm lucky I have stands, whatever, right on the corner from my house. But yeah, it's crazy. It's so nice.

BRIAN: Citi Bike is a truly... And this notion of micromobility and, again, it helps people be connected. Again, there's a very functional aspect of what it provides, but it provides connectivity, it helps people get places. And I'm with you, as well. I love New York, full stop. And there's just nothing better than riding a Citi Bike in the city and getting around.

GREG: And I don't hesitate to grab a rideshare, just financially, I can do that now in my life. But I would prefer to do a Citi Bike if I can. And honestly, in some regards, it depends on the weather. It's better.

BRIAN: Totally. Without a doubt.

GREG: I'm not here to sell against the two things, but it's interesting the experience of that. And it's interesting, why did Lyft step in to run the Citi Bike business? And you have New York, Portland, Seattle, a few other cities I think, right?

BRIAN: Yep.

GREG: Why'd they do that?

BRIAN: Big part of it is really from the core, from our founders, Logan and John, just really wanting to help solve at a city level how to help make life better. And obviously, there are environmental benefits of it, just mobility within the city. And what we see and ultimately believe is that the combination of rideshare and micromobility, they're powerful for both the city and for the citizens of the city.

GREG: I happened to notice in the little quick search that I did that the average revenue per active rider, the ARPU here, is supposedly just a little under $55 according to this. So I'm assuming that's public information. I was really surprised that it's... I don't know what period, I'm assuming that's average revenue per month per active rider. It didn't really say, but that felt incredibly low to me, which only gets at how big this opportunity still is. But that's what struck me about it.

BRIAN: Yeah, I mean the opportunity is massive. Within a couple months of joining Lyft, we did our first investor day. I mean, this is the thing, the opportunity within this category still is just completely massive. When you think we are 3 percent of the total trips that happen in the US today, not Lyft, but rideshare. So yeah. And within there, breaking it down again from a customer, from a marketer, being customer obsessed. The average sometimes hides the truth, which is there are some that take it incredibly infrequently, and maybe that's because it's a special occasion or maybe it's because it's just to the airport. And then there are others who are using it for things like, "This is how I get to work every day."

GREG: That's my situation. I could be near daily, I mean pretty close depending on where I'm going and what office I'm heading to. And especially in foreign lands, it's so helpful in anywhere that you're at. It's really an amazing thing that's happened here around rideshare for sure. A great business. Yeah.

BRIAN: Because you're a fan, this makes it so much easier, Greg.

GREG: Yeah, and I've told him...

BRIAN: At least, I'm not convincing you of our existence.

GREG: Exactly. I'm sorry, it's not really working on me. I don't see it. I don't get it.

BRIAN: I don't really get it.

GREG: No. In fact, actually I went to my mom, who is in her later years at this point, and I said, why are you driving? Wasn't life all about getting to a place where somebody could drive us around? This is it. Hard to change our habits.

BRIAN: We can have hours of conversations around this one and some pretty exciting ones.

GREG: Okay. Well listen, let's get to some... We should go back to marketing here a little bit. This is just sort of fun. You're just in too many interesting places and too many interesting times is what we already established. Okay. I always like to ask this of marketers. I know it's been true for me, and I find some answers are very interesting.

Brian, what is the best advice you've ever been given? Think back. You can name people or not name them. I don't care how you go out the thing, but what do you think is the best advice?

BRIAN: I have been fortunate to have a ton of really good bosses.

GREG: Totally. You've worked in some phenomenal places.

BRIAN: Yeah. There was one piece of advice that was, it's sort of unexpected for maybe this context, but I'll try to do my best to bring it back around. I was working for Rapp in New York, and they had asked me to move to lead the London office, and I was excited to take the move. My boss at the time in New York was English. And I asked her, I was like, "What advice do you have to give me as I go over?" And she said, "The best advice I can give you is that you realize you don't speak the same language." It was, obviously, it was shocking for me. I'm like, "No, no, no. We both speak English." But the point of it was we actually don't. Be conscious of the fact that the words that you use, the phrases, the colloquialisms are not all the same.

And for me, what that really cemented and embedded was something that I already had, but it just wasn't totally front of mind was a relentless pursuit of curiosity and not assuming to know something. And whether that's the dynamic nature of customers and what we knew yesterday, you can't just rely on that being the truth of going forward, or something as simple as just because we're doing something and we speak the same language that we can "do the same thing." And so it was a truly practical piece of advice for me when I got there, although I still had a lot of really funny interactions. But it really, really cemented my never-ending sense of curiosity and what our CEO here refers to as customer obsession.

GREG: By the way, I know Rapp because it's Stan Rapp who created that business, one of the fathers of direct marketing, right? I used to work for Lester Wunderman, by the way, many, many years ago, who we were always told was the father of direct marketing. I'm not here to fight it out between Stan and Lester at this point. But in that, do you have an example of where you think you just... I mean you've kind of mentioned some of that, you can get the colloquialisms wrong, but where else would it kind of come up that you think you maybe just didn't communicate clearly, I guess is what you're saying, right?

BRIAN: Yeah. I think that the true practicality of it, which was in that moment recognize the fact that you don't speak the same language. It may sound the same, but meaning and intent can be very different. But it had me continue to think about what other instances do I think that I know something and that I can just rely on that being a truth or whatever, but by continuing to question that I'm going to be better. And so I think constantly thinking about culture and how culture evolves. I mean, think about taking it back to Lyft today. We are one service, but we essentially operate 300 different or more micro marketplaces that are real time. And the needs and the behaviors and the dynamics of Columbus, Ohio are nowhere near the same as those of New York City.

And so it makes life so much harder, but constantly recognizing the fact that we can't just assume that things are the same based on them being in the same country or based on the fact that we're using the same technology or that we're speaking the same core language.

GREG: Wow. I love that point. Well, you know what? I'd like to pursue that, but I think I'm going to come back to a part of this because what you just did is kind of set me up for the main question of Building Better CMOs.

BRIAN: Okay, great.

GREG: So I'm going to go to that, then we're going to come back to some of it. I just feel like I have a million questions about how that shows up, and I'm going to ask you how it shows up in marketing is where I'm going to go. But right now, the purpose of Building Better CMOs is that there are fundamental things within markets, which you just said, let's acknowledge what we don't know. Marketers, us CMOs, we don't know it all. Marketing at some level is not... it's a little dangerous. It's not really a profession. And what I mean, let me qualify that a little, ouch. Sorry, I told you we wouldn't set you up here.

BRIAN: We're going to edit that part out.

GREG: Dear producer, if you want to have this podcast continue, you'll take that out later. But here's my point, doctors are trained in school to be doctors, and they're recertified all the time. Engineers, same thing, but lives are on the line there. Marketing doesn't have lives on the line. So as a result of that, I guess we've not really become a full-on professional. So the question that MMA's always looking for is what do we as marketers either assume that we could be wrong at or what do we not necessarily know? And I'm curious just from your perspective. And by the way, I've now asked that question probably well over two dozen times. I very seldom have gotten the same answer, which is problematic in its own right, I think at some level. But I'm curious from your perspective, Brian, what do you think that we in marketing could either stand to know better, understand better, or what's the gaps in the knowledge? Riff on that for a little bit.

BRIAN: Yeah, I mean, I could speak for myself and say that at any given time, any moment in time, there are probably an infinite number of things that I don't know that I should know about my craft or what I'm trying to do. And at the same time, when I kind of boil it down and I think of the long arc of things that I've been able to learn and experience over time, I think that we have an opportunity to better connect our both artistic craft and our scientific craft to the business more. What I mean by that is there are things that we need to do in our world that are our specialty. They are our secret sauce. It is creativity, which is a critical component of the ultimate success. But when we stop at that or when we stop at the marketing metric, I think this is where we miss out on having that sort of equal and consistent perspective that this function is a driver of business. And continuing to translate that into being a driver of business is a really important part of it.

GREG: Brian, I've got to tell you, you just totally reset the way I'm going to explain things into the future. Let me tell you what I just heard, what you shared. There is a big argument. Those that have been around the business a long time certainly know there's a big argument between art and science. You hear this art and science. And you hear people establish, it's almost Republican/Democrat kind of stance on that one. People got to pick their sides and they don't listen to the other, a variation of where you went earlier.

BRIAN: That's right.

GREG: And it's not art and science, it's business. And so how does it connect to business? And I would have to agree with that. I think we've done a terrible job at doing that as marketers.

BRIAN: And I have to say, there are those that do it incredibly well. I think that, I remember listening to this podcast with Linda Boff and thought, oh wow. And I've not had the opportunity to meet her personally. And maybe it comes from the fact that my first job was at the financial management program at GE.

GREG: I was going to say, I mean if anybody connected marketing to business, it was the GE people who figured that out.

BRIAN: Yeah, that's right. And so I really resonated with her perspective, her life experiences, and her successes in this. And there are, don't get me wrong, there are many of my peers who I know are in this constant pursuit as well. I would say as a whole, we probably spend not enough time on this as we do on talking about the craft and the elements of the craft.

GREG: Yeah. No, I totally agree. Well, and we're a funny business, too, and I know you have thoughts on this. I had a former head of Cannes Lions tell me his perspective, that we're the only industry that people win an award and win new business. And I thought, well, let me think now, are there any other businesses where you win awards and they really produce actual sales. And I don't know what the level that agencies set out to win awards, they game the award systems. I've been an agency guy, so I've seen some of that action and what goes on there, and it is because it's so crucial. It does sound a little messed up, though, doesn't it, Brian? That we're... I don't want to diss awards. MMA's got awards, but it's like really, awards is what wins the business? That's not the right way to do this, is it?

BRIAN: I know, I love awards. I think they do a really great job of getting affirmation in a world where marketing doesn't always get the internal affirmation to feel rewarded and recognized for the effort.

Incredible way of recruiting talent because people want to work for people and organizations who are successful, so it's incredible. And if that then becomes the fodder for our impact as a business internally, we've just then used the wrong metric. It's like we're using a great tool that is something that is incredibly helpful in one area. It's just not the tool for business impact.

GREG: It's good. And I agree with you, too. I like awards because they really do. You go, wow, that is incredibly clever. I mean, nobody goes to the office supply conference or whatever the hell they do, I don't know, and says, "Wow, that's incredibly clever how they sold that pencil." It doesn't happen. But in our business, there is so much cleverness and clever almost diminishes it, so probably a better word. But when you go to award shows and you experience some of this, you go, that is unbelievably brilliant how they communicate that point and accomplished it. But again, if you don't tie it back to the business, then we are left in kind of, well, we're left in the state we are now a little bit.

BRIAN: We're left in the state of people thinking that all we care about is awards, which sounds self-serving.

GREG: I had a CEO say to me one time, I'll never forget. He goes, "Huh, my CEO doesn't get awards. He doesn't really get to his peers and pat each other on the back all the time." But his point was, "My CMO does." Like, whoops. Oh, okay. Okay. So let's come back here.

GREG: If I can ask, where are you on that? I mean, listen, you're brand-new at Lyft. Okay, so let's give a little bit of time here. But where are you in connecting the art and science to business? And even less about you, where are we as an industry and do you have a path forward? Do you think you know where the answers might lie around that?

BRIAN: Yeah, again, there are people that I think have been really good at this where I've continued to help. I mean certainly, again, growing up in my early years in CRM after and then early web build, again...

GREG: When you're a direct marketer, you get this. It's funny, I'm going to call that out for the listener. I worked on P&G business for 10 years, and then I went to Wunderman to learn direct marketing. And it's like my eyes, it's like the mask had been taken off. I remember these people really know what they're doing. That was my conclusion at the time.

BRIAN: But do you also remember at the time — and I'm not going to sort of age either one of us — but truly as part of an agency team, when we would go to the client, the CRM agency was always the one not at... We were at the kiddy table, we were in the chairs along the back wall.

GREG: Direct marketing wasn't respected. It was the big brand agencies. It was the P&G work. It was the fun, it was the creative stars that really took the day. I remember every one of them I worked with and they were brilliant, brilliant, incredible people.

BRIAN: I also think that that was probably our own marketing challenge of ourselves because we sat on data that we then used to only inform the work that we did, whereas that data actually was a perspective of the customer that no one else had. And we could have been that true insights engine broadly as well as executing the direct response campaigns.

GREG: So go back to this, connecting it to the business. So where do you think you are? What do you think you know? What do you believe to be true? And even more importantly for me as the head of a trade association that's supposed to solve stuff, what do you want me to go fix for you?

BRIAN: Yeah, so I'll speak for myself right now. What I feel pretty good about is understanding, well, what our goals are as a top line, as a business. Part of the executive team helping to establish those goals and, secondarily, understanding the macro drivers of those goals for the business.

What I'm working through now is both what are the marketing drivers for that? How do we get to understanding which marketing levers we can pull that can impact which business metrics? And some of those we have, because we've been doing things for a while, some we just haven't been doing certain types of marketing for a while. We can talk about the pandemic and what that did to rideshare. And I would say the other thing that I feel like I have a really good handle on is an established partnership with my finance partners, the CFO, FP&A, and data science and engineering who are going to help us enable and construct getting the right data, setting up the right test frameworks in order to... And these test frameworks are not small AB headline testing things. They're kind of like macro business-driving frameworks, so that we go into these new eras of learning with no one questioning methodology at the other end of it.

GREG: So I'm curious... There's a couple bits of measurements. So there's MMM, gives you an overarching view of the world because — and again, I don't want to put you on the spot for measurement if you say that's not core for you. Or MTA, which I happen to have co-founded 20 years ago with a guy named Rex Briggs. But there's MTA, which tells us how to optimize media and elements of media, which is pretty powerful productivity. And then you've got this sort of, I think the mysterious edge and listen, both of those are hard to do still. But then you've got this other issue about how you really connect all of those marketing results to the actual business dynamics. And I think I'll go one step further on that, and this might be too far. What I sense is going on is that we don't know how to explain to the CFO if you reduce the marketing budget, here's the loss in sales. So while you may improve enterprise value in the near term, you're going to hurt enterprise value in the long term. We really don't know that, do we, Brian?

BRIAN: No. I would say, if I can, I would riff on a couple of areas. One is sort of underneath the more blunt funnel metrics of awareness and consideration.

GREG: Great. Yeah, the brand Lyft. I kind of left out the early ones. Yeah, exactly.

BRIAN: That's right. What are the perception gaps? If I'm able to move the perception that Lyft is the safest way for me to get around by three points in New York, what do I think that that can do to the business over the next 30 days, 90 days? And then to your point, what's the long-term either return on that or if we say, if we don't invest in this at this point, we think we're going to see a 2 percent drop in that perception. And what do we think that the impact is for that?

GREG: So you're saying we have that pretty cold now. You know what happens, is that what you're saying? Or no, we're still not connected that far. Okay. Okay. Got it.

BRIAN: This gets us to holy grail territory that I think where before we even talk about which are the right channels, which are the right audiences, which are the right... I would say leading indicator metrics to get to those, really figuring out how to connect data, how to connect philosophical belief around some of these things in order to demonstrate this sort of, to your point, not only just the upside opportunity, which I'm certainly often thinking about, but then also be able to quantify the downside opportunity in that.

GREG: Correct.

BRIAN: Opportunity cost, if you will.

GREG: How have you tried to operate to... and again, less than a year, we said less than a year, right?

BRIAN: Less than a year.

GREG: Yeah. There's a lot of things that have to be solved when you're brought on. I don't care where you are. I have no comment on Lyft. I don't know what was going on, but I just know whenever you come in new, there's a lot of things that have to be addressed. What advice do you have or what orientation do you have in your experience in the many companies you've been at for CMOs then coming in to put in the right analytics and measurement and so on? Whether you've gone there or not. I'm trying not to make it about how well have you done your job today, Brian? Trying to stay away from that and just get to what's optimal look like on that? What do you got to do?

BRIAN: I think you kind of have to read the room of the business and where we are. And for me, I often find that there is this balance of not waiting for perfect in order to move progress, but also not living in a world of just doing things and measuring success based on either marketing metrics or based on activity for too long. And so I think, again, aligning that. I tend to approach things of saying there are a couple of different paths we could take. One path is we start getting out there earlier, and we're going to go out and we're going to launch where we go and campaign. And the reason why we're doing that is we see these brand metrics. Do we have the perfect measurement? No, but as long as we're okay as a company of having less efficiency right now, but it then becomes a data point for us as we continue to build out. The other way we could go is we could not do... We can reserve sort of significant marketing investment for a while, build out the data engineering, build out the measurement paths on stuff, and then launch something. There is no perfect, right? And I think that that's why I tend to like to have these dynamic conversations with the CFO, with other executive leaders, business owners, the CEO, because then there's collective buy-in and support for whichever path.

GREG: Yeah. Hey Brian, you talked to me earlier too a little bit about... Just pick up on that a little bit about working with other members of the C-suite and some of the dynamic. Talk a little bit about where you think the CMO... You can either talk from your own perspective, you can talk more generally about what you see in your peers in the CMO's relationship to CFO, CTO, CIO, CEO for that matter. What do you think is going on there?

BRIAN: Because of the point that you made before: a doctor is a doctor and trained to be a doctor. For better or worse, there are a lot of overlaps in a Venn diagram of the title CMO, but certainly it is not consistent, the same everywhere. And that's even before you get into the interpersonal dynamics of some of the leaders of these other roles. I know some of my peers who are just really, really good at this, they're incredible at saying like, "Hey, we've built enough trust, CFO, where this is the money. As long as I return this ROI over this period of time, you're not going to get into the details of my execution plan, how I'm allocating the budget."

GREG: I think establishing healthy boundaries is what you just said. Your therapist would tell you to have healthy boundaries.

BRIAN: Yeah, that's right. Establish some healthy boundaries. I think that that's a hundred percent right. And others that struggle with it, and again, it could be the dynamic of the company, the leaders, and/or their approach to thinking that that is necessary or not. I think that there are a lot of people who want to keep other people at a distance from marketing within the company, and I tend to believe that that is, I have not found that to be a successful path.

GREG: No. I think an island onto itself is the wrong idea.

It's funny, Brian. This is a terrible thing to do to the listener because I won't remember the details. But we actually have a project that we're working on to try to connect, help CMOs to talk CFO. It's kind of the thesis of the project, and to help better connect the CMO to CFO, which as I mentioned earlier, I think we're pretty darn close to solving. I think we might be on the real path there. But what's interesting is that we actually developed a series of personas for CFOs, and we've shared it onstage, so it's not just snarky completely. But we've actually gone through and sort of said, here's the CFO and here's how to approach that. Here's the different requirements. It's kind of a little bit read the room at some level.

BRIAN: That's right. Yep.

GREG: Interesting.

BRIAN: I think that it's fascinating and as I mentioned upfront, I can't remember if we were doing pre-talk or not. I think that you help facilitate this better than many organizations do, which is this notion of CEO and CMO conference together. But the more we can learn from by bringing peers of chief product officers, CFOs, chief sales officers, whatever they are together with us and let it feel more inclusive of the collaboration than sort of like, "How do we keep them at a distance so that they don't touch my stuff," I think is going to be better.

GREG: Well, it's interesting. I mean this global board of the MMA, it's a board of CMOs, largely has specifically said, help us know how to connect. We have a project called Project ROMI, if anybody wants to look it up. I think there's some stuff online. We tend to just present it at events and not have written down a lot because we're still in process on it. But it is about helping to do that connection so that the CFO and the CMO can collaboratively decide what is the best strategy with the company. It might be we're earning short, we need to cut expense right now.

BRIAN: That's right.

GREG: And that's a decision we make, but let's understand what the implication is. I actually have a theory, Brian — and I've never said this before, certainly not publicly and certainly not recorded. But I have a feeling that because we're not good at that, it's what causes the trouble for CMOs down the road. We all know the data out there that CMOs tend to lose their jobs more quickly than other roles. And I think that's it. We come in, we execute, we do the best we can to move quickly and get out there, but we haven't managed an expectation. So they get two years down the road, three years down the road, and CFO's like, "Well, I'm not really getting it, so I think we need to cut this off." It serves us right at some level. I mean, I don't want to blame anybody, but it serves us right. We've not, as an industry, figured that out.

BRIAN: Well, I mean you hit on another really important point of this, understanding the business dynamic. And oftentimes we think about that from a top-line perspective. How do we drive more growth? What are the products that we need more from? But also managing cash flow and managing EBITDA. And when we see throughout either a quarter, especially if you're a public company, that either one of those proactively saying, I can actually help with cashflow or EBITDA by pushing this thing I was planning to do out to here. Here's what I think the downside impact would be on some of the top-line goals we have associated. If we're willing to move the OKRs out a quarter, we should do that because we can actually as a business... Could you imagine the CFOs, I mean, I've done this, so I know the CFO's reaction. They're shocked and they're in awe, but then they know that they have a business partner leading the function as well.

GREG: Yeah. Well, I told you earlier that from our marketing org work, we've used the phrase, "Marketers and CMOs are no longer running a function. They should be running a coalition." And it's kind of like, listen, we haven't even touched on that. But how do you input the product or should you have a role in product in some regards? Should the marketer do that? Should the marketer have a role in technology selection decisions? You've worked at a lot of tech companies. What's your take on that? Do they want to hear from you?

BRIAN: It depends, right? I mean, let's be honest, some of the tech companies I have worked with, there are many product leaders who have absolutely zero interest in marketing until it's time to create an ad. And there are, Lyft among many others that I've had the opportunity to work with, where they know that what marketing brings or should bring is truly this customer-obsessed perspective. And not just the customer obsession of how does someone interact with our product on the platform when they're there, but thinking about the whole of their lives, thinking about culture, the role that culture plays into it and bring those factors into the conversation. And like any relationship, it needs to be two ways. So we need to be as open to that same product person saying like, "Cool, I had a thought about marketing." Great, let's hear it.

GREG: Yeah, yeah. It's funny you say that, too. I remember I ran marketing in biz dev for Cars.com when we launched the business many years ago for the newspaper industry. And I actually, I never forget, I organized a product strategy session for a half day or something, and I found out later how much the product guy hated me for doing that. What was interesting, though, is I gave structure and business dynamics to the decisions that he was making, and he apparently went back to the president after at some point. He actually said that was really helpful. It was good to think about how others look at the business. So I applaud you're willing to take a step forward to try to help educate and inform without an axe to grind or whatever. That's all I was trying to do was trying to help the business make some better decisions and a process I'd been taught, so yeah.

BRIAN: Eye on the prize.

GREG: Yeah. There we go. Hey, Brian, this is really interesting. I'm want to ask you a couple of last-minute questions. I'm just curious. I think people are sort of interested.

GREG: So driverless cars, really? Now, finally? I don't know. I've been waiting for so long. Can you guys hurry this up? I really want driverless cars. Where are we? I know you're not personally responsible for that, but you know the people who are. What the heck? It was supposed to be here. I mean, McCauley, whatever his name was, the president of Ford said it was going to be 2021. Tick tock, I don't have a driverless car. Well, I do.

BRIAN: That's ambitious. I'm a car person as well. I grew up in Flint, Michigan, worked at General Motors.

GREG: Of course, I didn't even think that through, but of course you are. Yeah, you're a car guy, right? Yeah, you got to be.

BRIAN: Yeah.

GREG: Wait, before you answer the question, what do you drive now?

BRIAN: I drive an Audi.

GREG: Okay, well, that's a driver's car. That's a driver's car.

BRIAN: Audi electric. I have a five-year-old, so I needed practicality, and so I needed the SUV. And the Audi felt like I was actually driving a vehicle again with the benefits of it being electric instead of driving an electric sort of iPad road thing.

GREG: Okay. We won't comment who that was. Okay. Okay. Wait, wait. Driverless cars. So you're closer. Is it there? Almost there?

BRIAN: I think the complexity of it is so massive, not only from the data perspective of how do the different companies do it, but from a policy perspective, the multiple layers of policies that are federal, down to local levels, through to the capital investment and the ongoing maintenance and fleet management. It's far more complex.

GREG: Who's buying the car? Who's got the cash to buy the car? Right now that's offloaded to the drivers in some regards, right? Okay, so you've got to have the capital. That's one issue. You also have to know where to put the darn things. Where are you going to keep thousands of cars in a city all of a sudden, right? I mean, there's parking garage, but you can't just... Do you have any idea, I don't know if you can answer this question. Do you know how many cars would be required to do driverless cars in New York City, for example? Or what's the data in San Francisco? Do you know?

BRIAN: I don't know, based on density, and then you combine autonomous with not. I think for me, again, and part of the reason why I really love working at Lyft and the Lyft brand, what I really care about as well is coming back to human beings get to make money by driving for Lyft today in real and significant ways. How do we take an incredibly human approach to enabling humans to benefit on future technology that is frankly designed to make humans be positioned as a bug and not a feature. And so we and I am very focused on that part of it as well.

GREG: Yeah, no, listen, I don't mean to be disrespectful to that opportunity, right? It's a much more complex issue that has to happen. There's so much infrastructure that's got to be set up in place. Have any of you rideshare companies made public statements about when there might be widespread driverless cars or they've not? Anybody given a date yet? I just don't know if I've read it or not.

BRIAN: I don't know if anyone's given that sort of total forecast. I mean, it's going to be a hybrid world for a decade ahead. I don't see a world where the vast majority, I mean we didn't even talk about human adoption of certain types of technology. There are certain use cases where people feel more comfortable with it today. There are a number of use cases and just the psychological. Having been part of the industry that helped create this, freedom and owning your car have been synonymous for Americans for over 120 years. It's psychological.

GREG: A hundred percent. And yet a former CMO at General Motors told me that our cars sit 96 percent of the time, 96 percent. That's not a good use of capital for an individual consumer generally, unless to your point, you can take that and turn it into a business as the drivers have done, which is I think a smarter application.

BRIAN: Absolutely.

GREG: I'd also be remiss, too, last one for you… I'd be remiss, since you sit out in the Valley, not to talk about AI.

BRIAN: Yeah.

GREG: So I don't know if you want to go at it from a sort of overarching, what you kind of hear out there, what you see happening, or maybe if you want to just talk about AI and marketing and what you guys are doing to sort of further adopt.

BRIAN: Yeah. I think that right now AI is proving incredibly useful for productivity and, I would say, more predictive analytics. Gen AI is interesting. It's still, for me, very flawed. I think if you need it to make a hamburger on a table, you can probably be okay. My business is humans, and so I really, for me, both personally and for us, I really want us to continue to sort of be on the front edge but be very thoughtful about replacing humans with gen AI when there are actual human beings doing our work.

GREG: Brian, that's a pretty interesting perspective. I don't know if I've actually had somebody emphasize that quite in the way you have, which I think is a testament to kind of who you are as a person, and I think some of how you approach the world. Especially as a marketer, to realize that there are consumers and customers out there who at some level even — I mean you didn't kind of go this far — but that people have life struggles, they have great difficulties, they have challenges, financially, beyond. And a recognition of that and some of the role that I think Lyft probably plays in some of those people's lives and some of what they do, and you as a company and supporting sort of both sides of that. It's interesting that you sort of manage that.

GREG: By the way, I do have another question. Is there a reason you still have such a human approach to the world?

BRIAN: Why I do, personally?

GREG: Yeah. We talked about marketing missing from business, and you brought the question back to human dynamic. Interesting.

BRIAN: I think it has a lot to do with where I grew up and how I grew up in Flint, Michigan. It's not the easiest place to grow up in the whole world, but I think the character of people is incredibly strong there. Generally try to live by the golden rule, values-based actions. It is stuff that no one would overtly say, and I've probably become very California-ized in my explanation of it. And then just, I think also being a closeted gay kid in Flint, Michigan as well, and down to the person, everyone accepting me after I came out. Friendships and things like that. So, business and humanity can actually not only live together, but I think that they can thrive together. And I love being part of businesses that help enable that.

GREG: And I think if we look back, all of your businesses are really oriented towards that in the things that they've done, right?

BRIAN: Yeah.

GREG: Wow. Brian, congratulations.

BRIAN: Thanks, Greg.

GREG: It feels like a career well played as a human.

BRIAN: Yeah. A lot of serendipity involved. Being guided by some really incredible people and just saying yes.

GREG: Yeah. Good for you. Listen, I can't thank you enough for doing this today. Thank you.

BRIAN: Awesome. Thanks so much, Greg.

GREG: Thanks to Brian Irving from Lyft for coming on Building Better CMOs. Now check the description of this episode for links to connect with Brian. And if you want to know more about MMA's work to make marketing matter more, visit mmaglobal.com. Or you can attend any one of our 64 conferences and events in 16 countries where MMA operates, or write me, greg@mmaglobal.com. I want to thank you so much for listening. Tap the link in the description to leave us a review. If you're new to the show, please follow or subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find links to all those places and more at bettercmos.com. Our producer and podcast consultant is Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm. Artwork is by Jason Chase, and a special thanks to Angela Gray and Dan Whiting for making this happen. This is Greg Stuart. I'll see you all in two weeks.